On the Radar - No 208: An Echo

They never set out to be make post-rock music, but recording in the tranquil Sidlaw Hills near Dundee has shaped An Echo’s sound, Bryan Duncan discovers

“There seems to be thousands of wedding bands called ‘echo’,” says guitarist Fraser Gray.

Although the name An Echo may offer a taste of their soaring post-rock sound, the four-piece who hail from Dundee and Edinburgh certainly make music which obliterates any images of them playing bog-standard versions of Sweet Caroline to a gaggle of inebriated punters in a sweaty function suite.

They may veer towards the soundscapes of Mogwai - a band it seems obligatory to reference when post-rock and Scotland are mentioned - and Explosions in the Sky, but An Echo didn’t intend to be that sort of band.

“There was never a point where we sat down and thought, ‘let’s make post-rock music’, and in our heads that’s not the kind of music we are making,” says Gray. “Maybe our ideas just come out like that, and because we are so close to it it’s hard to get the distance to hear what others might hear. I think we would all love to be able to do that!”

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Perhaps people should ignore the whole post-rock tag, close their eyes and imagine themselves in rural Tayside. According to the band, recording in the Sidlaw Hills echoed the roots of their sound.

Gray explains: “It’s a converted barn beside our guitarist’s house in the surrounding countryside of Dundee. It’s just far enough away from town that it can feel like a sort of escapism, where we can really get lost in the music. It has a relaxed homely feeling. We’re lucky to be able record in this sort of atmosphere, we can really get experimental and be ambitious as we aren’t having to always watch the clock. It has great views all round and when we go outside for breaks I think we bring elements of it back into our music.

An Echo seem to have finally found their feet musically. Richard Grossi (bass), Duncan Coutts (guitar and keys) and Gray have known each other for the last decade. After constantly changing names and styles, and original drummer Michael Skelly dropping the sticks to focus on pursuing his PhD, the replacement - and “all around amazing instrumentalist” - Martyna Szmigiero joined after a friend’s recommendation.

“I think when Michael left, we had to sit down and think about if this is something we really wanted to do, and what we wanted from it. I think this gave us the focus we needed.”

Szmigiero’s recruitment rekindled the flames of An Echo: “I think that’s when we felt like a band again, and we wiped the slate pretty much and started from scratch,” says Gray.

Based on the few tracks posted online, An Echo indeed sound like a rejuvenated band. The lush, addictive guitar lick of Timberline wraps around your head like a tea cosy, whilst the drums and bass interlock perfectly in From Dust and Six Alive. Vocal versions of the former track are on the cards. Will we expect more non-instrumental songs in the future?

Gray says yes, but is aware of the potential reaction: “We feel we have to be 100% with them before they are put out there. People will naturally pull them out of the mix and focus on them, which can completely change the feeling of a track, good and bad.”

Suffice to say there’s been no bad vibes towards their material. Vic Galloway and Ally McCrae have championed them on their respective radio shows, after the band submitted their tracks through the BBC Introducing site. It came as a surprise to them that these tracks were played on-air, considering they were instrumentals: “It almost felt like a degree of validation that there are people out there that want to listen to our tracks”, says Gray.

You have to hear the existing tracks to sense that validation. Although the band come from “different musical places”, a love of soundtracks such as Vangelis’s Blade Runner and Daft Punk’s Tron: Legacy brought them together. Three Trapped Tigers and Nils Petter Molvaer are also some of the acts on their musical palette.

You’d think then that An Echo would be up to their eyeballs in synthesisers, but Gray insists it’s all synth-free: “Virtually all the sounds in our tracks are from manipulated drums, bass and guitar. There is surprisingly little synthesised sounds in there. We like to try and create our sounds using our guitar effects first before resorting to using effects on the computer.”

A physical 6-track EP should be on its way around October, including three brand new tracks: “We do a lot of the recording ourselves in the Sidlaws, and we can be quite particular sometimes, so the process can take quite a while!”

An Echo certainly won’t be available for weddings for the time being.

An Echo on: Facebook | SoundCloud | Twitter

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